Mifely said:
The "Cell myth"? You mean the fact that parallal multi-core architectures are the future is... a myth? Intel, AMD, Sun, IBM, and every other processor manufacturer in existance don't appear to agree with you. They seem to believe in "The Cell Myth", as you call it. They're all working on simplified, 16-core processors at this moment, to beat the heat problems super-sized processors (like the P4) can't overcome with sheer muscle. They aren't trying to beat the "heat problems", the core 2 processors are actually very good for heat production. They are conceding that in many cases parellel processors scale better than massively serial ones. GPUs suffer from the same heat troubles that CPUs do, and you can't ship a console with a set of huge fans, empty airspace in the case, and special cooling units. They go in the living room, not the special air-conditioned chamber of your home that you use as a server-room, and because you spent thousands on keeping it extra cool, you also use it for gaming. They aren't going to keep getting faster without going parallel. Whats your point? GPU's are already massively parrelel in everything they do. G80 - 120 ALUs vs the gt200 - 240 ALUs. The fastest PC Graphics cards on the market today... Multiple GPUs. Increasing the number of GPUs available isn't really as difficult an architectural change as changing the CPU is, so if your argument is that MS can merely add GPUs to their existing 3-core, overheated design, and just reduce the die on the CPU to reduce heat... then that'd be a good argument... except that most console apps are limited by CPU power, not GPU power. They don't have the memory required (zillions of textures for huge multitexturing, super complex geometry, etc. take a lot of memory.. much more than the PS3 or 360 are usually able to provide, and still have a decent game) to push their GPUs to their limits and still have a decent game, really. You *can* push the GPUs too hard... but as a general rule, game developers are constantly struggling to increase performance on both the CPU and GPU -- and I would say the CPU is usually the one they work harder to improve software performance on, not the GPU. The CPU has to feed the GPU -- even the fancy GPUs on the 360 and PS3 still need to have their animation blending and physics done on the CPU before the data is pushed up the the GPU, and that's a hella lota work. There's no reason for more complex geometry on characters if you can't, for example, animate the bones in the skeleton to make it look realistic, and the big part of the expense with that is on the CPU, not the GPU. I would say that consoles are very ram limited firstly. The console developers could implement their software in more efficient ways if they weren't so constricted by ram availability. But as a general rule, its easier to scale a GPU than a CPU for the greatest effect. Furthermore a current generation Nvidia chip can do physics on die and probably a lot of the SPE work anyway, as GPUs become more programable we will see them take on a wider variety of tasks. For example, if a current Nvidia chip was installed in the PS3 instead of the RSX it could do all the physics, it would not need vertex culling from the CPU, it could possibly even do the sound as well. If you doubt my claim, step back and think about it for a second. Why do you think ported games have, thusfar, tended to be so much faster on the 360 than the PS3? The 360s GPU is perhaps *slightly* faster than the PS3s, in certain circumstances (and the reverse may be true in other circumstances)... so why do you suppose the framerate is so drastically different? Its because the GPU output dependsupon the CPU that feeds it, and porting an app that is written to run on a 3-primary core CPU, to be an app that is meant to run on a 2-HW thread CPU and 6 SPUs is difficult, and publishers often push the ports out the door because they are tired of spending money on the framerate. Perhaps the Cell isn't as good in real world circumstances as they hyped it to be. The Cell is not a good processor, its a fast processor, but not a good one. If it takes 100 hours to get 80% of the performance potential from one CPU and 100 hours to get 30% of the performance out of a CPU thats theoretically twice as fast, then its not a very good architecture in comparison. In order to be signifigantly better, as a platform, the 360 would have to change in a big way. increasing the number of cores it has to, say 6 or 8, is just going to make the chip crazy expensive and smouldering hot, if its even possible. The PS3's Cell, on the other hand, can probably up the number of SPUs very easily with smaller die sizes. It *is* a forward thinking architecture, no matter how difficult it is, for the average game development studio, to squeeze performance out of it. The cell is a scalable architecture. But your judgement that the 360 CPU will turn into an 8 core space heater is completely false. Microsoft has a number of options available to them for a 2011 release date. They control the Direct 3d 11 development process so they will know which GPUs are appropriate for their consoles. They will also know before anyone else except for the designers of these GPUS exactly how programable they will be. They also have Intel, and with their huge X86 libraries they could easily make the switch from IBM. With Intel and Nvidia going head to head over the GPGPU market space, they could also get a cheap deal on Intels "Larrabee" Their rasterization many core x86 GPU. Every developer has at some point used X86, its an even easier transistion than a Cell1 to a Cell2. Lastly they could seek out AMD for both their CPU and GPU designs. As I said, this generation is built to last, as least as far as MS is concerned, for a pretty simple reason -- heat. I think 5-7 years per console generation is a dated concept, and if you did a little research, I think you might agree. If this issue was purely a business problem, Sony and MS might very well choose to release a new console by 2011 or 2012. At this time, however, the PS3 and 360 are powerful machines, and they won't be overshadowed by successors anywhere near that soon. If there's a new console by 2012, it'll be from Nintendo. The PS3 and 360 will just be cheaper and slimmer by then. It is a dated concept! I would say 5 years is about right for a console release, 4.5 years is possible too, early 2010 would do quite nicely. I wouldn't expect a new "high-end" console until at least 2013, and the ball is in Sony's court for making an easy upgrade on their existing hardware. MS is going to have to work for it, and its going to be painful... especially when they tell the customer "Sorry, backwards compatibility... totally impossible on the new platform" -- unless they're willing to include the entirety of the 360's triple core CPU on the new design. |
Tease.
